The Service Behind the Service: Sensegiving in the Service Economy

In this modest essay, we reflect on the crucial role of sensegiving, and hence sensemaking, in the creation of IT-enabled service encounters. “Creation” has two meanings here: (1) the design of repeatable (reproducible) IT-enabled services, and (2) the on-going coproduction of IT-enabled service events by service providers and recipients. Indeed, we will argue that the sense given by diverse and role-differentiated actors constitutes in its own way a crucial and pervasive service that enables services in the more familiar sense. Sensegiving, as a “service behind the service,” is of particular salience when it comes to novel IT-enabled services, because of the challenges posed by their innovative character. As a practical matter, we are especially interested in how failures in the delivery of innovative services can be caused by shortfalls in sensemaking and sensegiving, and how the difference between successful and failed service outcomes commonly turns on choices made during the design of IT-enabled service systems. These designs either recognize and embrace, or marginalize and ignore, the required and novel sensemaking and sensegiving of employees and customers. We also recognize that system designs are rarely determinative (as constraining as they might prove to be), and that service outcomes will still depend on the variable appropriation of information technology in real situations of practice. We conclude our essay by outlining some research directions in IT-enabled service delivery, arising from these issues. 118 Part 1: Conceptualizing & Theorizing about IT-Enabled Services